Wolverhampton Man Among Six Jailed Over National Action Membership

A fanatical neo-Nazi couple who named their baby son in honour of Hitler have been jailed for membership of a terrorist group.

Adam Thomas, 22, and Claudia Patatas, 38, were found guilty after a trial of being members of the extreme right-wing organisation National Action, which was banned in 2016.

Thomas was jailed for six years and six months while Patatas was sentenced to five years.

A sentencing judge told them they both had "a long history of violent, racist beliefs".

At trial, the jury heard Thomas and Patatas gave their child the middle name Adolf, which Thomas said was in "admiration" of Hitler, and they had Swastika scatter cushions in their home.

Photographs recovered from their address also showed Thomas cradling his new-born son while wearing the hooded white robes of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

In conversation with another National Action member, Patatas said "all Jews must be put to death", while Thomas had once told his partner he found "all non-whites intolerable".

Former Amazon security guard Thomas and Patatas, a wedding photographer originally from Portugal who also wanted to "bring back concentration camps", were found guilty after a seven-week trial.

Thomas, a twice-failed Army applicant, was also convicted on a majority verdict of having a terrorist manual, namely the Anarchist's Cookbook, which jurors heard contained instructions on making "viable" bombs.

Judge Melbourne Inman QC, jailing the couple at Birmingham Crown Court on Tuesday, told Patatas: "You were equally as extreme as Thomas both in your views and actions.

"You acted together in all you thought, said and did.

"In the naming of your son and the disturbing photographs of your child, surrounded by symbols of Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan."

The couple, of Waltham Gardens, Banbury, Oxfordshire, both wept and held hands in the dock as they were sentenced, while Thomas repeatedly shook his head.

Both had been involved in what the judge called the "desecration" of civic memorials with National Action stickers, including one in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

The judge said: "You went there, defacing a memorial for those who died in the war protecting this country from the Nazis."

He told Thomas: "Your home with Patatas was a veritable shrine to extreme racism.

"You and she gave your child the middle name Adolf and you were photographed on a number of occasions with the child, with you in KKK garb."

He told Thomas, the only defendant to give evidence at trial, that his views had been "so extreme" his only recourse had been to claim to jurors he had "deliberately exaggerated, to shock".

"That was rightly rejected by the jury," the judge said.

Turning to Patatas, Judge Inman QC, said: "I have seen no shred of remorse."

He told her: "On one occasion, you and Thomas said, if required, you each would be willing to murder a mixed-race child.

"These are not idle words. The vile regime you and Thomas worship, and which you wish to impose on this country, did - and would do - exactly that.

Taking account of her one-year-old child, the judge said: "As an act of mercy, I reduce your sentence from six to five years."

Their close friend, Darren Fletcher, of Kitchen Lane, Wednesfield, Wolverhampton, who admitted membership before trial, was also jailed for five years.

Last week, a court heard a prosecutor claim Fletcher, 28, had taught his daughter to give a Nazi salute and how he sent a message to Patatas saying "finally got her to do it".

Judge Inman QC told him: "Even by the standards of National Action, you were an extreme member".

He added: "The depth of your racism is also evident as evidenced of how you have been able to groom your own child.

"On your own evidence, you have been seeking to indoctrinate your own child in these vile beliefs."

In all, six people were sentenced for being members of National Action's now dismantled terrorist cell, on Tuesday.

Judge Inman QC said: "Its aims and objectives are the overthrow of democracy in this country by serious violence and murder, and the imposition of a Nazi-style state which would eradicate whole sections of society by such violence and mass murder.

"The eradication of those who you consider to be inferior because of no more than the colour of their skin or their religion."

Also jailed was Daniel Bogunovic, 27, of Crown Hills Rise, Leicester, who stood trial with Thomas and Patatas, and was found guilty of membership.

The judge handed Bogunovic, the organisation's Midlands cell co-leader, a sentence of six years and four months, telling him: "You were a National Action member from first to last."

Two other men, cybersecurity worker and the cell's "banker", logo designer and computer security expert Joel Wilmore, 24, and van driver Nathan Pryke, 26, the group's "security enforcer", were also sent to prison.

Pryke, of Dartford Road, March, Cambridgeshire, who admitted membership before trial and who the judge accepted had since rejected his extremist views, was jailed for five years and five months.

Wilmore, of Bramhall Road, Stockport, Greater Manchester, who also pleaded guilty to membership and possession of terrorist instruction manual on making a Molotov cocktail, was sent to prison for five years and 10 months.

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